In cosmic history, some of the major changes such as reionization were driven by baryons (i.e. the stars and gas in galaxies), despite the fact that they contribute only few percent to the total mass-energy budget in the Universe. This thesis is about the interplay between gas and stars in highly star-forming galaxies and aims to explore the physics that dictates transformation processes that took place at various stages in cosmic history.

Using panchromatic observations ranging from the 21cm H I line in the radio regime to the extreme ultraviolet (UV), we studied ionizing radiation from massive stars (direct and through hydrogen recombination lines) as well as the atomic and molecular gas content in 15 highly star-forming local galaxies. The results are brought into cosmological context, taking a step forward towards finding answers to the following open questions in galaxy evolution: Which physical conditions enable galaxies to leak ionizing radiation (and power reionization)? What drives the high Lyman-alpha escape fractions observed in the early Universe? How did the massive stellar clumps found in high redshift galaxies have possibly formed?

One of the galaxies we studied is Tololo 1247-232. Our results show that ionizing photons (i.e. Lyman continuum) escape from the region around two central massive stellar clusters. From UV absorption lines we further conclude that bulk of the gas in the galaxy must be ionized and clumpy. Moreover, the 21cm H I data reveal a low upper limit neutral gas fraction. We thus argue that the Lyman continuum escape in Tololo 1247-232 is facilitated by the large amount of ionizing radiation that is produced in the central region and then escapes from clumpy, density bounded regions. This scenario may also explain how early galaxies at z>6 have powered cosmic reionization.

Additionally, we performed infrared and molecular gas (traced by CO) observations of galaxies drawn from the "Lyman Alpha Reference Sample'' (LARS). The galaxies were selected as analogues of high-redshift galaxies. Our main discovery is a roughly linear trend between the Lyman-alpha escape fraction and the total gas depletion time. This finding is counter-intuitive, because given the resonant scattering nature of Lyman-alpha photons, an increase in atomic gas should result in longer path lengths out of the galaxy, making photons more prone to absorption. Some other process seems to facilitate Lyman-alpha escape. We speculate that gas accretion enhances the turbulence of the cold gas and shifts the Lyman-alpha photons out of resonance. This scenario would naturally explain elevated Lyman-alpha escape fractions during the phases in cosmic history when galaxies were still accretion-dominated (at high-z) rather than defined by gas depletion.

Finally, we present high-resolution interferometric observations of a single galaxy, LARS 8. The galaxy is a proto-typical analogue of normal star-forming galaxies at z~1-2, i.e. it is massive, has a large gas fraction, is rotationally supported and its morphology is dominated by massive clumps. We show that these clumps are the result of an extremely gravitationally unstable gas disc. Large scale instabilities are found across the whole extent of the rotating disc, with only the innermost 500pc being stabilized by its bulgelike structure. Our findings prove that gravitational instabilities may play a significant role in galaxy evolution, in particular at z≃1-3, when galaxies are characterized by massive clumps.